


Everything I can't be is everything you should be

by PiraticalPrincess



Series: When we were kids Verse. [1]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF, Building a family, Clint can keep a secret, F/M, Harm to Children, Life isn't perfect but it's better together, Natalie kind of sort of can keep a secret?, They're both teens in the beginning, partners in crime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3321734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiraticalPrincess/pseuds/PiraticalPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalie meets someone who offers her the chance to change her life and she never looks back. </p><p>Or, the secret family who isn't so secret. Secretive, yes. Secret? No.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hello World, Hope You're Listening

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Come Home" by One Republic. 
> 
> I put underage warnings in the tags because yes, they meet as children. It happens.
> 
> Also. I met Jeremy Renner on 2/6/15! Like randomly bumped into him at a club and he bought me a drink. That right there is the only reason I'm posting this right now, because I am hugely stuck in writer's block after 39.000 words.

She was born in August to two people who married because they were the only people under the age of fifty in their small church. A man and a woman who married because it was expected of them and not because they even really liked one another. Her mother named her Natalie, because the little girl who was born with a little squished up face and a Mohawk of red hair was her Christmas gift. Of course Natalie was born in August but she had been made in December when her mother was in the midst of Holiday cantatas and performances. 

When she was born, Natalie’s mother was a music teacher in a high school. She’d had five miscarriages before Natalie was born, including Natalie’s twin brother. Her father was a man who jumped at every big opportunity but lacked the gumption to ever make anything of out of it so he fell back into kitchen work. He had been a manager of a Domino’s when Natalie was born. Natalie’s father hated the fact that Natalie had been born when her brother was not and he had not felt it was necessary to stay the entire twenty six hours of labor that it took for Natalie to be born. Natalie was reminded of this fact every day of her father’s life.  
She had grandparents. Her mother’s parents lived about fifteen miles north of them in a small retirement community. She had a Mimaw who loved her dearly but couldn’t keep up with her. She had a Granddaddy who was fascinated by technology and loved VCR’s and recording things, and making home movies. They were there on her first birthday, and her second all the way up to her tenth birthday. Granddaddy died in January after her tenth birthday and Mimaw couldn’t live without him much longer and she passed away the September after her eleventh birthday. Natalie’s grandparents are from Kentucky by way of Scotland and Germany and are family, music, education, cotillions and charm school, and most importantly warmth and hospitality.  
Natalie’s father’s mother was still alive. Shirley lived five miles south of Natalie’s parents. She’d never met her grandfather, but like his son he was remembered to her as a cruel man. She had a step grandfather but he wasn't much nicer. Her Granny was pretty much famous for her food at the holidays. Natalie doesn't know a nice thing about the woman except for the food she misses. She doesn't miss being pinched or spanked for speaking even the smallest word. David’s mother is ignorance and hate and bitter, greedy poverty. 

Natalie’s mother is named Belle. Belle studied languages and music in college and had a doctorate and played the piano like an angel. Once, in a rare moment of not being overstimulated (Toy stores were lights and sounds and people and she had to listen and absorb everything), Natalie gave a concert in a Toys R Us on a toy piano. It drew an audience and Natalie even amazed her mother. There was no fumbling; the three year old put her hands in the position she saw her mother play and she played the piano flawlessly while singing first the ABC song and then lullaby by Billy Joel. Natalie started piano lessons that night. As Natalie grew, Belle never discouraged her from learning anything, whether it was another instrument or ballet or voice lessons at the conservatory, or even taking apart the toaster. The taking things apart often required a lot of trips to Granddaddy’s house to get things put back together, otherwise Natalie would get a beating. Belle did her best; often taking the worst beatings herself to protect Natalie but his wrath was fearsome. 

Natalie’s father is named David. He is firmly of the fact that girls shouldn’t be educated. Belle only wins that fight because the state steps in to declare that Natalie needs to be in school and David doesn’t push the issue when the big man with the shiny badge taps his handcuffs with a pointed look. David isn’t so bad, mostly neglectful and emotionally absent, until Natalie is eight. David was born with spina bifida, a degenerative spine disorder that often means the person won’t walk but he defies that, and just after Natalie’s eighth birthday he gets hurt. He herniates four discs in his spine and because of his spina bifida there’s no remedy for it and after that he is around constantly, and the music lessons stop after he puts Natalie in the hospital. It’s not so bad, Natalie remembers, because she runs around in the swampy woods for hours each day after school. She misses her Granddaddy and her Mimaw though. When David gets hurt he decrees Belle’s parents evil and there’s no more visiting. 

David kills Belle in the spring before she turns twelve. Natalie remembers it clearly. David comes in when Belle is making dinner and he doesn’t like what she’s making and then there’s running and David has a knife and there’s blood, so much blood. They scramble around the kitchen, Natalie watching from the living room and as David looks at Natalie and lunges, Belle gets in his way and she is stabbed in the stomach. Natalie knows, somehow, that this is the end of Belle’s life, but Belle presses a hand to her stomach and grabs the phone and Natalie’s hand and they’re running. Belle calls 911 before they’re hiding in the woods behind their house, but by the time the police can get to the boondocks, she’s staring at the stars with blank eyes and Natalie is covered in her mother’s blood. David does not go out quietly, he’s lost the knife and is now peppering the woods behind their house with blasts from a shot gun, screaming about worthless little girl whores. When a policeman gets David’s attention, David shoots at the police car and a firefight happens that has Natalie running further into the woods. She still hears when her father is shot, and even though relief washes through her young frame she’s still sad. She has no parents left now and even though David was mean and scary he was still her dad. Even though he shot her mom and wanted to kill her. 

The police are shocked to find her sitting by her mother’s body. Natalie gets to pack a couple of bags and a policeman calls his wife and she comes and helps Natalie get washed up. The lady just keeps giving her these looks and Natalie’s a little frustrated by it when she can finally get into the car and leave her house. The lady tries to get her to leave her favorite Strawberry Shortcake shirt behind, crumpled in a ball on the floor of the bathroom, because it’s covered in her mother’s blood. Natalie wraps it in a plastic bag and shoves it at the top of her knapsack.

There aren’t any pianos at her Granny’s house. Well, there is but she can’t play it. Natalie can’t sing or run or jump or play. She misses a lot of school because she has to sit quietly on the floor in front of the watchful eyes of her Granny or her step grandfather. She doesn’t get to speak; in fact she can barely blink unless she wants a beating. There’s only food when people are coming over. Other than that, Natalie doesn’t get to eat. She has to steal and beg from around the neighborhood. Natalie knows now that this is what made her father the way he was and she’s sorry that neither she nor her mother knew enough to help him. Granny’s husband uses his belt, a horrible studded thing that leaves bloody furrows in Natalie’s delicate red headed skin, sometimes just because he feels like she needs a beating. Granny drinks a lot and her favorite form of entertainment is watching her man tanning Natalie’s hide. She lives this way for a little over a year, just past her thirteenth birthday. 

It’s September when the circus comes to town. Granny’s drunk and Natalie’s escaped the confines of the small house to wander around town when she finds the circus. She has a few dollars in her pocket thanks to mowing the neighbor’s lawns, even after Granny had bloodied her back for using the lawn mower and taken most of the money. She’s disappointed to find the big top show is closed down for the night. She’s never really had the chance to be good at anything but the goldfish game and if she came home with a goldfish, well. She didn’t think she could take very many more beatings. 

Granddaddy had taken her to the circus before, she remembers as she starts to walk through the animal pens. She looks at the elephants still in their show gear with the name of the circus on their headpieces and nearly bawls right then as she reads the name of the circus. It’s the same one that Granddaddy had brought her to all those years ago and before she knows it she’s swiping tears off her cheeks as she stares at the elephants, probably the same ones he’d hoisted her up on his shoulders to feed. She misses everyone so badly right now and she’s so homesick for a house in the swamps of Florida that had cockroaches in it and water damage and walls so soggy that you could fall through them. She dries her eyes in her jean jacket and goes on, looking at the cages with the lions and the tigers in them. 

Natalie’s looking at the giraffes when she hears the shouting and the scuffling. Part of her wants to run. She knows she isn’t supposed to be back here but she wanted to see the animals. The other part, the part of her that always wants to see what’s going on, wins out and she’s there before too long, watching some boys in popped collars and boat shoes beating up two of the circus boys. They’re not too bad, winning for the most part, but there are four of the rich kids and only two of the circus boys. She picks up a rock from the ground and holds it in her fist while she looks around for anything to break up the fight. The boys are both dark blonde haired. One is older and his hair is slicked back from his head and he’s in a green spandex suit on, kind of poisonous looking neon green. The other is wearing what looks like a purple Robin Hood costume, complete with bow and arrows, and he’s tow headed and cow licked and kind of messy. He sees her, locking eyes with her for a minute until he’s torn away by a heavy fist to the cheek. After another scrambled minute she finds a hose and drags it to them, standing a few feet away. No one but the archer has seen her yet, so she hefts the rock in her palm and then throws it at the biggest white short wearing guy.

“Hey assholes!” She shouts and turns the fire hose on full blast. It hits the rich kids and after they slip and slide for a minute before they run off grumbling curses. The pair stares at her for a few long beats before the taller one in the poisonous green suit curls his lip in a sneer.

“We had it under control.” He snarls and she shrinks back, dropping the hose to the ground and wrapping herself further into her jacket. 

“I-I was just trying to help.” Natalie whimpers and shrinks further back as the archer takes a few steps towards her. He looks mad too. She shouldn’t have done anything. “I knew you could handle it, I just wanted, I just wanted to help.” 

It’s quiet for a minute and Natalie takes the opportunity to walk back the way she came, past the giraffes and the big cats, but she stops at the elephants, curling her hand around the trunk of the big girl who stuck it out there to be petted. It wraps around her neck as she pets her. Natalie isn’t scared. It feels like the elephant is holding her, cuddling her and she starts to cry again. 

“You need to stay calm and back away from Elsie now, okay girl?” Natalie turns her face to see the younger boy looking a little panicked but trying to stay calm. The other boy is coming around her left, as if he’s ready to swoop in. Elsie’s trunk tightens around her back and Natalie gets the feeling that the elephant could definitely hurt her but she isn’t. And then she’s in the air and there’s screaming, but she’s just sitting on the elephants shoulders and that makes her cry harder but now it’s because she’s scared of them and because she hasn’t felt such blind acceptance or indulgence in a long time. But even through her tears, she’s trying to get the boys to stop rushing Elsie because the elephant makes her feel something. 

“Stop, she doesn’t want to hurt me!” She wipes her tears off, watching as both boys are now scaring the elephant, which rears and trumpets. 

“Just, just get down from there!” The older boy is really panicked now. 

“Oh, I don’t know what you’ve done in the past Elsie girl, but you’ve got those boys scared now huh?” Natalie leans down to murmur in Elsie’s ear. “I have to get down now honey.” She says and Elsie prances and makes the boys back up and then advance until Elsie prances again. After a couple more rounds of prance advance retreat, Elsie kneels and then uses her trunk to help Natalie down. The younger boy is immediately there unlocking the door to the elephant pen and grabbing her arm to yank her out. 

“She doesn’t like people.” He says with a frown, looking her up and down. 

“I’m not a people.” Natalie states quietly and ducks her head down, pulling away and shoving her hands in her pockets and walking away. 

“Hey, are you hungry? Barney and I were just going to go and get pancakes.” The younger boy chases after her and falls in step with her. Natalie looks over. She’s hungry; she’s always hungry since Granny’s house.

“I don’t go places with boys I don’t know the names of.” She tries for teasing but it just comes out defiant and she deflates, hunching back into herself as if she’s expecting blows. 

“I’m Clint and that’s Barney.” Clint tells her after a couple of steps. Barney falls into step with them on Clint’s other side.

“Natalie.” She tells Clint finally. 

They go to Denny’s after the boys change. Natalie doesn’t think she should be out this late but she’s having fun. She’s having the first fun she’s had in a long, long time and she doesn’t want it to stop but eventually all the pancakes are eaten and there’s no more hot chocolate and the waitress is giving them the stink eye. The clock on the wall says it’s nearing midnight and while she doesn’t want to, she has to get home before Granny notices she's missing. Clint’s asked once if anyone’s going to miss her, and her answer was far bitterer than any thirteen year old should ever be. No, no one would miss her. 

But it’s time to go. Clint and Barney have some chores they should be doing and they argue between them as she walks away, towards Granny’s house. She hears feet pounding on the pavement and then Clint is next to her.

“Can I walk you home?” He asks her softly but it isn’t really permission. He’s going to walk her home. She doesn’t want him to walk her home, doesn’t want him to see how she lives or what if Granny or her man are awake? What if he sees her getting a walloping? The thought makes her sad and she sighs and he looks over. Then he looks away but he moves closer to her and they walk to her Granny’s in the quiet night. Clint walks her up the front walk, but then tilts his head and follows her as she goes around to the side of the house. He expects her to go to a window or even a back or side door, but she doesn’t. She goes to a rusted out old tool shed. 

“Well, this is me. Thanks for walking me home.” She says even as he’s trying his best not to let his worry, his anger and disgust at whomever she lives with, show on his face. 

“Yeah, I had fun tonight.” He tells her and gives her a fond squeeze on her elbow. She opens the door to the shed and then goes inside.

Granny’s man is inside the tiny shed, sitting on her bed and fingering that awful belt she hates. 

Clint didn’t really know what possessed him to ask Natalie to pancakes with them. She’s small, smaller than even a thirteen year old should be, but he can see she’d have some amazing curves if she ever got enough to eat. He’d seen the way she scarfed her food, the way she’d curled an arm around her plate while she ate to guard it from him and Barney. He saw the way she flinched and hunched away and cried at Elsie liking her and he knew these feelings all too well. So when the little redhead with the pixie face and the shaggy hair tried to fade off into the night, he decided to walk her home. Make sure nothing bad happened to her for however long it took to get home. And when the man with the hate filled face took his belt to her, he would have intervened if it wasn’t for her pleading tawny yellow eyes begging him not to. He almost did it when he saw the stripes on her back, barely scabbed over, break open and bleed along with new, fresh stripes. So he creeps down the little hill into the vacant lot filled with nasty looking cacti and hides until the side door to the house slams after the man. 

“Natalie?” Clint creeps up and whispers against the closed door. She’s not crying, not even making any noise, and he wonders if the guy killed her when she opens the door a tiny crack. 

“Clint, you have to go. He’ll see you!” She whispers. 

“No, I want to talk to you.” He shakes his head fiercely and after the briefest of moments the door opens further and a pale hand reaches out, grabs the front of his shirt and hauls him inside. He’s a little surprised at the way she manhandled him, but she’s got no patience for arguing.  
Inside the tiny shed it is freezing and pitch black. She’s got a cloth and she’s trying to clean her back, and at first he turns his back because her shirt is still off, but after a minute of listening to her grunts as she tries to clean herself up, he takes the cloth from her and begins to clean up her back. 

“Nat, you know I live at the circus.” He starts and her breath hitches. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this. Sometimes not by much, but it is better.” He helps her pull a shirt on over her head and pets his fingertips down her back. 

“It can’t be worse.” She says bitterly and wraps a threadbare blanket around her shoulders. 

“I just wanted you to know that you,” Clint swallows and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You have other options, Nat.” 

“I need to think about it.” She tells him seriously and he gets that. “Okay. When do we leave?” 

“That was quick.” Clint doesn’t laugh because it would be weird to, right? But she makes him laugh. “We pull out Tuesday morning at dawn. Can you be ready Monday night, Tuesday morning I mean, about three thirty or four?” 

“I can be ready.” She answers resolutely. It’s Saturday night, or at least it was. Is it Sunday already? She can make it. He watches her shudder then.

“Are you scared?” He asks and she shakes her head firmly. 

“I’m excited. Second star to the right and straight on till morning, Clint.” Natalie reaches out and squeezes his hand and that’s that. 

She’s come to the fork in the road and she chooses.


	2. Forgive Me If I'm Young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natalie finds a new beginning

Clint goes to the trailer he shares with his brother and lies down in his bed. He doesn't tell Barney about Natalie or how she’s coming with them, and he spends half the night wondering about where she’ll stay and how a girl is going to get privacy and how they’re going to get enough food to feed another mouth when he can barely fill his own stomach most nights. But then he thinks of her bleeding back and he knows he can’t leave her there. He goes to sleep with the Peter Pan quote echoing in his ears.  
He spends Sunday, the matinee and the night show and all of his chores, thinking about Natalie and if she’s alright. He doesn't dare go to see her until it’s time to go. Monday comes and there aren’t any shows today but there’s packing and taking apart the big top and so many chores. He still doesn’t tell Barney about his plans. He goes to bed early that night and gets up before the alarm on the clock under his pillow goes off, but not by much. He slides his feet into his boots and laces them up, being careful to be quiet in the trailer. Clint puts on his jacket but he doesn’t zip it up until he’s out of the trailer and down the road towards Natalie’s shed. 

She meets him with a duffel bag and a backpack hidden under her bed. She doesn’t have much, that’s for sure, but she does have a black eye. Clint holds out his hand when she opens the door and she immediately puts her hand in his. He takes the backpack off her shoulders with his other hand, pulling his hand from hers so he can take it off her back and put it on his own, and then he takes the duffel bag and puts his hand back around hers as they walk to the circus. She doesn’t talk until the shed is no longer in sight. 

“Thank you.” Natalie doesn’t say anything else on the subject, but they make small talk about stars that are long gone as the sun starts to think about coming up. They reach the circus as the sun is just peeking over the horizon. Barney is outside stretching as they come up. 

“What’s she doing here?” Barney asks warily. Natalie immediately hunches into her thin jean jacket and Clint bristles a little bit.  
“She’s coming with us.” Clint declares, puffing his chest out a little bit. 

“Like hell. What would she even do here?” Barney grunts out as he pulls a shirt over his head. Clint opens the door to the trailer, putting her duffel inside and then the backpack, and walks over to Barney. He grabs his brother’s arm and looks back to Natalie.

“We’ll be right back.” He tells her. Natalie stares at them as they walk away. They’re not gone for very long, but they had been shouting almost as soon as they’d walked away. She can’t hear what they were saying, but Barney comes back and looks her over carefully. 

“You’re going to have to earn your keep.” Barney tells her and then disappears. Clint gives her a sheepish look as he rubs the back of his neck. 

“He just means you’ll have to find a job or something.” He explains. Natalie didn’t think he meant anything else. “Are you hungry? Of course you are. Let’s find something to eat.” Clint ushers her inside, taking a minute to stow her stuff on a sleeping platform in the back. When he comes back he opens a cupboard and pulls down two cans of soup.  
“Is beef stew okay?” He asks her and she tilts her head.

“That’s not breakfast.” She wants to tell him that’s not food, but she’s so hungry that if stew was what they had, she’d definitely eat it. 

“Yeah, we… It’s all we have, pay and food allotments don’t come until Wednesday.” Clint says a little embarrassed. 

There were other things in the cupboard. Natalie had seen it when Clint opened it, but she doesn’t want to be presumptuous about things. Clint pulls out a pan from another cupboard and he finds a can opener in a drawer and opens both of the cans. He lights a burner with a lighter and then sets the pan on it. Natalie watches him and then comes to stand next to him. 

“Can I do it?” The way she says it sounds like, for you? 

“Do you know how to cook?” He tilts his head down to her and she gives a single nod, reaching out to brush his hands off the handle of the pan. “Okay. I can go help Barney get the trailer ready to go. I’ll be back in in a few minutes, okay?” 

“Okay Clint.” Natalie agrees and then he’s swinging out of the trailer. 

She doesn’t mean to snoop, but she’s looking for bowls and spoons when she finds the treasure trove of foodstuffs. There’s steel cut oats, whole wheat and white flour, white rice, baking soda and powder, yeast. They have an entire kitchen full of food, unopened five pound bags of rice in a closet, cans of tomatoes and other vegetables. Seeing this, she swings the refrigerator and freezer open and her mouth hangs open. There’s food in here. When Clint comes back she fixes him a bowl of stew and sits across from him at the table as he tucks into it like a starving man. After a minute he looks up.

“Where’s yours?” He asks. 

“I didn’t know if I was allowed.” She answers and he gets up and gets her a bowl of her own. He comes back and covers her hand with his.  
“Look honey, everything I have? It’s not much but everything I have you can have too.” He fixes his eyes on her face and doesn’t look away until she meets his eyes and takes a bite of stew. 

“So all that food in the cupboards?” She prompts him hesitantly. 

“What food, the cans of soup?” He asks her. 

“The oatmeal and the flour and stuff,” She hedges. He squeezes her fingers.

“It’s not instant; Barney and me don’t know what to do with it.” He frowns at his empty bowl and pushes it away. She nudges her half eaten bowl across the table to him and his frown gets bigger. “That’s yours.” 

“I’m okay, you eat it.” She’s grateful for what she ate, but she can’t eat any more right now or she’ll be sick. Clint pushes the bowl back to her and she nudges it back again.  
“I’m not taking your food.” He argues and she shakes her head. 

“You’re bigger than me and I’m full.” She argues back and then ducks her head, but he squeezes her fingers and then takes the bowl, taking out her spoon and sticking it in his empty bowl before he finishes the stew. 

“Does the oven work?” Natalie gets up and goes back to the closet pulling out yeast and flour. 

“Yeah, but it doesn’t when we’re driving because it runs on propane. Why?” Clint gets up and follows her, putting the dishes in the sink. 

“I can make some bread.” She offers. Clint thinks about it. 

“White or wheat bread?” He asks then. 

“Both, if you want.” She’s digging around in the closet, halfway in it when Clint pulls her out and hugs her. 

“I guess we found your job.” He says. 

She’s got the bread rising in two big bowls Clint borrowed from one of the trapeze artists when Barney slams into the trailer. 

“Clint, it’s time to go.” He says and then goes to the stove. “This is breakfast?” He asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“Okay Barn, do you want me to drive first so you can eat?” Clint asks. 

“Duh squirt.” Barney answers. 

“You can drive?” Natalie looks up to Clint.

“Legal and everything, I got my license two months ago.” Clint grins down at her and makes his way to the front of the trailer. 

“What the hell is this?” Barney asks as he tries to lift the towel over one of the bowls. 

“It’s going to be bread. Can you please leave it alone while it rises?” Natalie asks timidly. Barney grunts and drops the edge of the towel down. He sits at the table and looks at the empty place in front of him pointedly and Clint comes back from the front of the trailer where he was getting ready to drive, reaching up for a bowl over her head. Once he’s got it down, she takes it from him and fills it with the rest of the stew, putting in a spoon and then she puts it in front of Barney. 

“Hey, do you want to come up front with me?” Clint asks then.

“If you want,” Natalie hitches a shoulder in a little shrug, suppressing a wince. 

“Yeah, keep me company.” Clint grins and then goes up to the front. Natalie looks at the bowls of dough on the counter and slides them into the oven for safe keeping before she goes up to the front. 

“Hey.” She says softly, wrapping her fingers in the curtain between the cab and the house part of the trailer. Clint's concentrating on getting into the caravan, but as soon as they’re idling and waiting for everyone else to line up he looks up at her and then pats the passenger seat. 

“Come here and sit down.” He invites and she slides into the seat next to him. When they get out onto the highway, his hand is just dangling over the console between them and she fits their palms together curiously. He gives her an inquiring look, but he likes touching her so he lets her wrap his fingers around hers. It’s not long before she’s curled up in the seat and dozing. Clint feels this warm feeling in his chest as he glances at her. 

Natalie doesn’t wake up until the trailer stops driving and Clint whispers her name quietly. 

“Huh what?” She mumbles, wiping her hands over her eyes. 

“We’re here. Barney went out to help and I have to go too. Do you want to get the soup started?” Clint asks from past the curtain. Natalie climbs out into the back of the trailer. 

“Uh, can I use the oven now to make the bread?” She asks him, moving past him to check the bread. She pulls it out and tosses some flour onto the counter to give it a quick knead, but when she goes to rinse her hands there’s no water. 

“Soon, I’ll go hook everything up before I go out to unload.” Clint laughs, not a malicious laugh but a happy laugh that she smiles at. “Give me ten minutes, okay?” He spreads his hands in a hold on motion and then dashes out of the trailer.

She looks in the fridge and finds cheeses and jams and all sorts of things, but things that can’t be eaten on their own. Looking into the freezer she finds meats, but if you can’t cook then there’s no point in all. There’s nothing easy to cook. The trailer rocks and she opens the window to look down on Clint, hooking hoses and cords up to the side of the trailer. He looks up and catches her looking at him and he shoots her another of his grins. 

“It’s all set now if you want to give it all a go.” He flashes her a thumbs up and lopes off in the direction of the towing trailers. 

Natalie goes back to the freezer and finds a steak. She sets it on the counter, taking the bowls of dough off and putting them on the table while she fills a pot with water and lights the stove, putting the water to warm while she gets the dishes from breakfast ready to wash. When the water is heated she pours a little in the sink and then puts the frozen steak in the water to thaw. When the dishes are dried and put away she finds a cutting board and a knife but it’s not nearly sharp enough. She uses it any ways, hacking the meat into a ground beef texture. Next she takes the pot and pours out the water, then adds oats and fresh water and puts it on to cook while she shapes the bread into small individual loaves of bread and puts it in the oven to bake. She cleans out one of the bowls and begins to make a meat loaf using the chopped steak, some spices in plastic baggies she found tossed into the closet under a bag of rice and a single egg she found in the fridge. When the oatmeal is done, she uses half of it to use as a binder for her meat loaf. That goes into the oven as soon as it’s ready. When the bread is done, Natalie cleans off a pan and then shapes the oatmeal into little cakes, which she spoons some of the apricot jam onto and slides into the oven with the meat loaf. She opens a can of corn and heats it on the stove before washing out the pot and using it to warm water again. She saw a bag of potato flakes earlier that she can make mashed potatoes with, and when the water is boiling she makes mashed potatoes. 

Clint comes back just before dark, sweaty and dirty, and he immediately backs out of the trailer, staring at the door before he comes back in.

“It smells so good in here that I had to be sure I was in the right place.” His eyes are wide as he takes in the meat loaf and the bread and all the food on the counter. 

“I’m glad you like the smell. Let’s hope it tastes as good.” She gives him a smile over her shoulder and he reaches out to take her hand. He presses a kiss to her temple and she stiffens, looking up at him even as she’s processing what’s going on. She likes it, she decides before she relaxes into him. It made her feel kind of tingly. 

“I think it’ll be great.” Clint says, a little awkwardly. Natalie doesn’t want awkward. She likes the way he makes her feel safe, and she likes being here, so she hip checks him.  
“I think Barney will be hungry too, right?” She asks him and he nods. She puts two loaves of the bread into the bowls and then pushes them into Clint’s hands. “Why don’t you go find him and I’ll just get everything ready?” 

“Five minutes. I’ll give this back to Shelly and find him and we’ll be back in five minutes.” Clint promises. 

“Thank her!” Natalie calls out to him as he runs out of the trailer.  
“I will!” He shouts back. 

When Clint comes back with Barney, there are three plates on the table and water glasses full of coca cola. The plates are full of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, corn, bread and oat cakes with jam and even Barney is staring with wide eyes before he slides to the side of the table with one plate. Natalie pokes Clint in the side until he slides into the other side of the table and scoots over to make room for her. 

“How did you make all this food?” Barney’s mouth is hanging open in shock as he picks up his fork to take a bite of meat loaf. “Oh my God.”  
Clint agrees on a little sigh as he jams his oat cake into his mouth.

“You had every single thing in your closet, the cupboard and your fridge.” She says as she swirls her fork through her mashed potatoes. “It’d be nice to have some fresh veggies and you’re out of eggs but it’ll be okay until Wednesday. I’m sorry it’s not better.” She apologizes. 

“Is there more?” Clint holds up his empty plate and she starts and stares at him a little before the scraping of Barney’s fork against his plate has her turning her head and catching sight of his empty plate. 

“Goodness gracious.” Natalie’s eyebrows are up in her hairline now. “Yeah, there’s more.” She gets up and is in the process of filling Barney’s plate as she catches sight of Clint trying to steal her mashed potatoes. She flicks a piece of bread at his head and doesn’t even get close, but Clint snatches it up anyways and shoves it into his mouth. She splits the rest of the food evenly between Clint and Barney and then puts their plates in front of them, sitting down to eat her own dinner. 

Clint tries to insist on doing the dishes to thank her for dinner, but she only has one job so she asks him what he usually does after dinner and then shoos him outside. She rummages through the freezer and finds kielbasa sausage. She turns to dig through the canned fruits and vegetables and finds a can of apples and she’s already planned breakfast. She decides that the dishes can wait when she hears a guitar being played really close, and on her way outside to investigate Barney grabs her arm. She doesn’t like it like she does when Clint touches her, but it’s nothing the way Granny or her man made her feel when they grabbed or touched her so she doesn’t shake him off. 

“You can stay.” Barney tells her gruffly. 

“Thanks Barney.” She turns and goes outside to where Clint is sitting on a folding chair and concentrating on the guitar in his hands, his tongue clasped firmly between his teeth and poking out between his lips. 

Natalie doesn’t talk. She sits down near one of his legs and puts her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands. 

“One day I’ll figure this out.” He promises her as he hooks his fingers into the strings and plucks. 

She likes listening to him stumble around the instrument. It reminds her of when she was younger and classes at the conservatory. When he gets tired of trying to figure whatever he was playing out, he sets the guitar down. 

“I can play.” Natalie looks up at him as he looks to her.

“Play what?” He tilts his head. 

“Everything,” She promises with a Mona Lisa smile. “May I?” She holds out her hands.

“It was my mom’s.” Clint hesitates for a long beat before he hands her the guitar and she reverently puts it in her lap before running her fingers over the strings with a humming hiss. 

“She’s a good guitar.” Natalie has her own look of concentration. Her lips twist to the side as she bends her left ear slightly to the guitar as she plucks and tunes out of habit and without much thought, and when she’s finished she stretches her fingers and hears the cracks and pops of joints long out of use. She puts her fingers to the strings then and coaxes the guitar to wail the blues before smoothly transitioning to ‘While my Guitar Gently Weeps’. 

“You can’t have my bow.” Clint says with a hint of desperation in his voice and she laughs a little tinkling sound. “I mean it, it’s the only thing I’m good at and you’re good at the guitar and I thought I was good at that and I can make the soup better than Barney and you’re better than me at that too.” 

“I’m sorry.” And she is sorry, immediately offering up the guitar to him. “I won’t play anymore.” She promises. 

“That’d be a damn shame.” Clint is hearing the beginnings of the drunks starting to come out to play and he stands, folding up the chair and tucking it under his arm. “Early day tomorrow, want to go to sleep?” 

“Sleep sounds nice.” She doesn’t want to find out what happens when these people drink yet. 

Barney’s asleep in the big bed over the cab of the trailer when they go in. There’s a bed in the back, in the window and like the bed over the cab it’s the entire width of the trailer and it belongs to Clint and there’s really nowhere else for her to sleep. She freezes. Boys and girls aren’t supposed to share a bed and she’s beginning to develop a crush on Clint and it’ll ruin everything. 

“I can sleep on the floor.” Clint says before he goes into the bathroom to change into some holey sweats. When he comes out, he takes one of the two pillows on the bed and then hunkers down on the floor in the narrow walkway. Natalie lies down in the bed and tries to sleep. 

She can’t sleep though, and it’s clear that neither can Clint. Her voice is small in the dark when she sits up and looks at Clint.

“I can’t sleep.” She tells him. 

“It’s not the most comfortable bed but we’ll get used to it.” Clint promises as he rolls over and punches his pillow. He’s under his winter pea coat now and trying not to shiver.  
“I just… I can’t take your bed. Let’s switch places.” She offers and he shakes his head.

“No Nat, you should be in the bed.” He starts and bowls her over when she tries to argue. “No, let me do this for you.” 

“I can’t Clint, I just can’t.” She sighs and wraps her arm around her knees, ignoring the twinge in her still hurting back. He’s quiet for a little bit and then he sits up, grabbing his pillow and the coat. 

“Do you trust me?” He comes to the foot of the bed and asks. 

Natalie is quiet then too. Does she trust him? Trust is so unfamiliar now. She trusted her mom and she even trusted her father and now they’re gone and it’s been a year since she felt safe. If she was honest with herself, it’s been five years since she’s felt safe. She thinks about today and sleeping in the chair next to him as he drove her far away from her fear. He gave her food to cook so she could fill their hungry bellies, and he’s given her a bed to stay warm in, and he’s given her music back and he hasn’t hit her, and she hasn’t felt like she was going to be hit all day. Finally she moves. 

“I trust you Clint.” She flips back the thin blanket and he crawls in, putting the pillow down next to hers. They have to rearrange for a few minutes before they find a comfortable position. First they’d tried to give each other plenty of space but the blanket wasn’t that big. Then he rolled on his side and spooned her, but that position made her hiss and arch away from him because of the wounds on her back. But she’d liked that way so they kept it for future sleeping. So he lies down on his back and opened his arm to her and she used his arm as a pillow as she stretched out on her stomach. 

“Why do you still have your jeans on?” He mumbles sleepily as the seam of her jeans rubs his thigh through one of the big holes in his sweatpants. 

“I don’t have any pajamas.” She shrugs lightly in the dark. 

Clint decides that’ll have to change when they get some money. He wonders how much money would be saved now that they weren’t buying canned soup anymore. He’s going to take care of her no matter what, he decides as he buries her face into her hair. And, he’s going to get her a shower tomorrow. Definitely.


	3. For Speaking Out Of Turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's better than the shed... right?

In the morning, Clint and Natalie are woken up by someone pounding on the door to the trailer. Clint lets himself out of the bed cautiously creeping along until he can look out and he finds Trickshot on the doorstep. Mr. Carson owns the circus but he’s semi-retired, leaving Trickshot to run the day to day operations of the circus now.  
“Oh my God, we’re in trouble.” Clint throws her a long look. 

“Barton, you better open up. I know about the girl and I ain’t mad, just gotta figure out somewhere for her to go.” Trickshot bellows. 

“Are you going to send me away?” Natalie leaps out of bed and flies to Clint’s side, staring out the little window in the door.

“Come on out sweetheart and we’ll talk.” Trickshot coos and Natalie feels a little sick. He’s a big greasy man and she definitely doesn’t trust him. 

“I’ll keep us safe.” Clint turns his head so Trickshot can’t see him speak and finally Natalie opens the door. 

So darlin’, what can you bring to our little circus?” Trickshot plays with a little mustache and looks at her expectantly. “I mean, I can see why you brought her along Hawkeye, she’s a pretty little thing.”

“She can be my assistant.” Clint blurts and Trickshot considers it. 

“You know that we pull double duty in the show and we all have jobs on the midway. What else?” Trickshot has this way of speaking that makes her feel icky and nervous. 

“Elsie likes her.” Clint says. 

“Show me.” Trickshot orders and doesn’t give her time to get any shoes on so she’s forced to go out barefoot to the elephant pen. She walks right up to Elsie, who gives a happy little trumpet and uses her trunk to puff air at Natalie. 

“Hey there Elsie,” Natalie reaches out to touch the trunk of the elephant. 

“Well I’ll be damned.” Trickshot is a little impressed. “Can you ride her?” 

“I did before, but let’s see.” Natalie isn’t trying to show off but she wonders the same thing so she goes around to the door in the side of the pen and opens it. Clint follows just to the door, closing it behind her as she goes in and looks up at Elsie. She lifts her hands up and then Elsie’s trunk is around her middle and she’s being put on the elephants shoulders again. “Yep, I can ride her.” 

“Hey you! Get off there, she’ll kill you!” Some guy comes running from down the animal pens and Trickshot stops him. 

“The elephant likes her Roberto.” Trickshot laughs. As to show it, Natalie taps Elsie’s head and asks to get down, and Elsie kneels. Natalie comes out of the elephant pen.  
“And what else can you do?” Trickshot asks.

“I… I don’t know.” Natalie shrugs and Trickshot’s eyes light up. 

“Well now little filly, I’m sure we can find some way for you to work the outside job.” He says with a filthy look up and down her body and Clint shoves her behind himself. 

“She can play the guitar.” Clint bites out and Trickshot gets a little mad. 

“Fine, she can play. And she can do an elephant thing in the show and be your assistant.” Trickshot gives her three jobs in the end and she’s told to report over to the contortionist for tumbling training. 

“I’m really sorry.” Clint says as he takes her hand when Trickshot and Roberto are gone and they’re going back to their trailer. 

“Why? I have to pull my weight, right?” Natalie asks as Clint opens the door and she goes into the trailer. 

“I just thought you could take a break before you got dumped into everything.” Clint apologizes again. 

“It’s alright. Breakfast?” She asks, holding up a pan. 

“Yeah, I could eat. I wonder where Barney is.” Clint muses as he reaches over her head to pull down soup and she shakes her head.

“No, you leave the cooking to me. You save those for a day when I don’t feel like cooking, okay?” She stretches up on her toes to close the door to the soup cupboard and he grins. 

“What are you making?” He asks her as she begins to make mashed potatoes again, making them a little dryer than she would normally. She sets them aside and begins to slice the kielbasa she’d found last night into pieces, and then put them in a skillet. 

“German potato pancakes and sausage with apples.” She tells him. 

“It sounds weird, but I’m sure it’ll be good.” Clint is rummaging through a drawer under the bed. “Oh, I forgot to show you where you can unpack your stuff. Here, I made some room in my drawer, and over here,” He opens a very narrow closet between the tucked away bed and the food cupboards. “This is where you can hang your costume when we figure out what you’re wearing.” His costume is inside hanging neatly alongside his bow and quiver. 

“I really do appreciate everything, Clint.” She says quietly as she’s forming the potato mixture into pancakes and frying them. “I feel like I’m taking everything and not bringing enough back.” She feels a little helpless and useless and it’s bothering her. 

“You’re making food. So far since you’ve been here, I’ve eaten better than I have since… since my parents died.” He admits, coming up behind her and when she doesn’t turn around he wraps his arms around her waist from behind and hugs her, careful of her back. 

“Yeah… Me too, Clint, me too.” She really likes his hugs. 

“After breakfast, can I look at your back?” He asks her as she warms up the apples.

“I’m a dirty mess.” She excuses and reaches up for two plates from the cupboard. 

“And you can have a shower, but I don’t want to let your back get infected.” He reaches up and hands them down to her and she loads them up, saving some food for Barney. This time they sit across the table from each other and she immediately tucks in while he looks at the food before he finally cuts part of the pancake, shovels on some sausage and some apples and eats it. “You wanna marry me?” 

“No.” She says, but she reaches across the table to take his hand anyways. 

“Aw Nat. Come on, I gotta nail you down quick before you realize what a schmuck I am and you cook for someone else. This is amazing.” He wheedles. 

“I’m thirteen and I’ve known you for four days.” She rolls her eyes. 

“So, I’m sixteen and I’ve known you for four days and I still asked.” He pulls a face back at her and she laughs. 

“I’m already sleeping with you, why should I marry you?” Natalie teases him. 

“Oh! I feel so cheap.” He fans his face, keeping a straight face until she just can’t hold it back and she laughs a full belly laugh. When they’re serious again and back to eating, she looks up at him. 

“Natalie Barton doesn’t have such a bad sound to it.” It doesn’t have a bad sound to it. Natalie Barton sounds like a person, just like Clint Barton sounds like a person. Natalie Mook, now that sounds like a… nothing. It doesn’t sound like a person’s name, it sounds like a bad New York gangster name and when she’d heard about it from a kid in her guitar class in the conservatory she didn’t think much on it. Now it’s just a source of great amusement to her. Her father’s family couldn’t have had a better last name. She takes her plate to the sink and goes to get her duffel and backpack. She drags them over to the bed and climbs into it and then unpacks a thin pillow, the threadbare blanket that Clint recognizes from the pallet in the old tin shed. She’s got another pair of jeans, a long sleeve shirt and a short sleeve shirt, some panties that he turns his head away as she puts them under her shirts in the drawer, and a shirt wrapped in a plastic bag. 

“What’s that?” He asks when he sees the bloody Strawberry Shortcake shirt. Her fingers are as reverent as they were when they touched his guitar, and she grabs his wrist to pull him up onto their bed. 

“This is my mom, Clint.” She answers, rubbing her cheek against the blood stains before she holds it out to him. “I was wearing it when my dad killed her.” She’s got a sheen of tears in her eyes and it’s a little crazy, the rational part of his mind tells him but the part whose dad killed his own mom screams that this is how she’s holding it together, but he touches his fingers to the shirt. It’s a story she hasn’t quite told him but he wasn’t going to push for it now. 

“Hi, mom,” He says and she beams at him and carefully folds the shirt up back into the plastic bag and tucks it into the corner of the drawer. She finds some socks; all mismatched but carefully sewn back together when they get holes, in the bottom of her bag and puts them in the drawer. She takes her jean jacket off the bed where she’d put it last night and folded it up in the drawer. Lastly she has a pair of boots which she tucks in the corner of the floor. In her backpack she has VHS tapes, probably a dozen, and a jewelry box.

“My mom didn’t give this to me, I took it and I hid it when I had to go to Granny’s. And these tapes are all from my mom’s parent’s house. They’re home movies.” She gives him a hesitant smile. 

“I’ll keep them safe.” He says as he stashes them in a secret compartment in the trailer. 

“Clint! Clint, are you in there?” A woman’s voice comes from outside and Clint pops up, shutting the secret hatch and looking out the window. 

“Oh, hey it’s Lisle. She’s the contortionist you’re supposed to meet up with, and Shelly the trapeze artist’s sister. You know the one that I borrowed the bowls from yesterday?” He kicks the drawer shut and gives her a hand down from the bed. “Hey Lisle!” He bounces out of the trailer and down to the grass outside. 

“Where did you learn to make bread boy?” Lisle laughs and jostles Clint with her shoulder. Natalie watches from the kitchen window, unsure about another new person so soon. 

“Oh, Natalie… Hey Natalie, come on out!” Clint hollers and she jolts. 

“You have girl in there?” Lisle asks. “Did you kidnap girl?” She lets out a deep belly laugh and Clint flushes. 

“Uh… Probably the law would say that, but she ran away with us. Actually, Trickshot wants her to learn some tumbling that she can do on Elsie’s back, and maybe how to be my assistant. And of course she’ll need a costume.” Clint rubs the back of his neck. “Will you come out here, Nat?” He’s a little exasperated now and so Natalie shoves her feet into her sneakers and then leaves the trailer. 

“Hello, I’m Lisle.” The woman, probably no more than mid-twenties and pretty, offers her hand for Natalie to shake and Natalie takes it.  
“I’m Natalie.” She says. 

“Natalie was going to shower and then I was going to bring her over to you.” Clint says, but Lisle just tuts and then claws onto Natalie’s arm, pulling her towards another row of trailers. 

“She can shower with Shelly and me. We have a bathtub, you know.” Lisle pulls her off. Natalie looks at Clint, mouthing help me as she’s dragged away. 

 

It’s nothing like it sounds. Shelly and Lisle have an actual bathroom in their trailer, not a tiny shower and toilet thing. Lisle tells her Shelly isn’t there right now and begins to pull out costume after costume. Apparently Lisle’s other job is to keep the costumes. Finally she pulls out a white leotard with flame accents and holds it up to Natalie, then nods. She finds a pair of tights and a pair of ballet slippers and then looks at Natalie’s face while she’s holding her chin in her hand.  
“Alright milaya, we cut your hair. It’s so pretty but it was not taken care of. Then we wash you and we’ll try the costume on.” Lisle tells her, already snipping away at her hair. When she’s finished, Natalie’s hair is almost as short as Clint’s, but Lisle rubs some gel through it and makes it pretty. Lisle then draws Natalie a bath, which Natalie wants to stay in all day but Lisle makes her get out of after a half an hour. Lisle comes in then and catches sight of Natalie’s back. She doesn’t say anything, but she starts to pace, her fists balled up in furious rage. 

“It’s alright.” Natalie starts. 

“It’s not alright.” Lisle cuts her off. Natalie wraps her towel tighter around herself and reaches out to touch Lisle’s hand. 

“They can’t hurt me anymore. It’s alright.” Natalie says and Lisle finally blows out a breath. 

“You’re right milaya sestra. Now, let’s get you dressed and in your makeup.” Lisle tells her. She disappears then for a moment and comes back with a salve that stinks and hurts when it’s put on her back, but Lisle promises that it’ll help her. Then she gets dressed and sits through Lisle plucking and painting and doing her hair again. 

“Am I done?” Natalie asks when Lisle finally steps back. 

“Can you make a pose like this?” Lisle demonstrates a pose that has one leg high over her head, like an ice skater and Natalie copies it. Lisle takes a picture with a Polaroid camera. When it develops, Natalie gasps. 

“I’m beautiful!” She looks up at Lisle in surprise. “I look like a season fairy from Fantasia!” 

“You were always beautiful. Now, go and show Clint. He’ll be in the big top.” Lisle kisses her cheek and pats her arm carefully before leaning back against the doorjamb of the trailer, watching as Natalie runs across the grounds towards the big top. Lisle takes her clothes and adds them to the laundry that she’s about to do. 

 

Clint’s high up in the rafters of the big top when Natalie comes in. At first he doesn’t recognize her. Her hair is cut in a pixie bob, making her pixie face really stand out, and she’s got glitter flames licking along her arms and neck and up her cheeks, and the ones near her hair are maroon. She’s in a tiny leotard with more flames, all the way down to her red ballet slippers. 

“Clint?” She calls and then Clint really does fall out of the rafters because it IS her. 

“Holy shit Nat.” Clint says after he lands in the safety net above her head. He flips out of the net and lands next to her, looking her over from head to toe and back.  
Clint messes up her lipstick, but it’s her first kiss and it makes her feel lightheaded and giddy and it’s kind of perfect. 

“God, you were pretty before, but…” He trails off; unsure if she’s going to bite his head off for saying she was a mess. 

“I know.” She loops her arms around his neck and he kisses her again.

“I miss your hair though,” He touches her really short hair. 

“I know, but there was no saving it and it’ll grow back.” She smiles up at him. 

“But I like the nails.” He says, rubbing a fingertip over her nails, just shaped and painted fire engine red like her lips. 

“I feel like a grown up.” She giggles and then pulls out of his arms. “Okay Barton, show me what your assistant does.”

“Um, basically I shoot arrows at you and miss, but hit the targets.” He rubs the back of his neck. 

“How often do you hit the target?” She makes a face at him and he looks her straight in the eye. 

“I will never shoot you.” He swears. 

“I trust you.” She whispers.

She’s a part of the show a week later, when they’re in Atlanta. She’s in the processional, riding Elsie in the opening parade, and she’s in Clint’s act and sometimes when the clowns get stuck in the clown car she gets to perform her own act. It’s an extended version of the little bit she does in the elephant act, jumping and tumbling and doing all sorts of acrobatics from Elsie’s back. In the conservatory she’d taken five years of ballet and gymnastics tumbling, and even though she’d been gone from the conservatory for five more years she hadn’t stopped playing until she’d gotten sent to Granny’s. After the show she can do whatever she wants and she’s usually free until the next day when she has to go play ‘gypsy music’ over by the fortune teller’s tent at about three o clock. 

Clint has to help run the ring toss with the milk bottles, and she usually hangs out with him a while each night. It’s getting colder the later in the year it gets and the further North they travel. Natalie bakes bread and trades it for a needle and a spool of thread from the lion tamer’s wife. She spends nearly a week patching up the holes in Barney and Clint’s clothes. Every small tear, every ripped knee and unraveling pocket, every hole that’s not meant to be there is sewed closed. Then she’s a little lost what to do. Overwhelmed is more like it. She doesn’t know what to do. She has two talents. She can make a home and she can put on a show. So she starts reading everything that isn’t nailed down, and sometimes she even reads walls of posters that are nailed down too. She reads everything from the bible that Ornithia the strong man’s wife lets her read to the medical dictionaries she finds outside a college campus in North Carolina. There are two volumes in it and she reads every entry over and over. She even reads a telephone book until Lisle notices and starts teaching her to read the Russian she and Shelly speak and the language of the books on the shelves are in. So when Clint gets sick a little bit before Thanksgiving she figures out that it’s the flu and not something a doctor needs to see him for and she gets him better. Where Natalie has always been smart (she is a musical prodigy, but still a prodigy after all), Clint is barely literate. Sometimes she finds him trying to read the books she leaves scattered on their bed but he always gets frustrated and goes to shoot. So she trades a copy of Tolstoy in English to Irina for her old English primer and settles down with Clint outside under a tree. 

“Do you want to learn to read?” She’s hiding the primer in her jacket. 

“I can read.” He protests angrily. She gives him a look and he deflates with a face. “I could always read better.” He concedes and she pulls the book from her jacket and begins to teach him to read. It’s slow going, but he gets better. He still mouths the hard words and stumbles over them, but he can order things off a menu that doesn’t have pictures now.

 

Life falls into a rhythm, and with regular meals of actual food Natalie isn’t the only one who starts to fill out her costume a little better. Clint has always had muscles, but  
with better nutrition he starts looking like a man and he grows like a pea shoot. Natalie doesn’t get fat, but her hips round out and her thighs don’t look like sticks on a scarecrow, and Lisle grabs her arm one Tuesday and Natalie comes back with bras. She tries to hide them, but they share a drawer and a bed, and there’s no missing the way there are breasts pressing against him in the dark. Clint thinks they’re nice breasts. And then soon after that there’s blood in the laundry and Natalie gets whisked away by Shelly this time, and she comes back with a new set of clothes and now there’s a box marked tampons in the bathroom under the sink. One day Clint is curious, and looks inside the box. There are pictures and a diagram and he thinks about it so long he has to get up in the middle of the night and rub one out. What? He’s sixteen, looking at linoleum makes him horny and the only girl he has eyes for is so not ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I own nothing you recognize


	4. There's Someone I've Been Missing

Natalie is quick to learn that Barney isn’t as nice as Clint and Lisle are but if she learned one thing in life it’s that not everyone is and she has Clint and wouldn’t give him up for anything. Barney picks fights with Clint and sometimes Clint disappears after Barney and comes back with a black eye. Barney stops coming home, and starts staying out all night. Eventually Barney moves into another trailer altogether. Barney moves out a couple of days after his eighteenth birthday, so Clint and Natalie try to sleep apart but don’t even make it one night before she’s crawling back into their bed. They always talk at night after they’re tucked into bed. Clint tells her about Iowa and his parents and how his dad beat his mom and even himself and Barney too. He tells her about his dad’s drinking and how his dad was drinking one night and killed himself and Clint’s mom in a car accident. She tells him about her parents and traveling to live in Peru for just under two years before they came back and her own dad got hurt and floating villages on reed mats on big lakes. He tells her he likes country music and she likes country rock and bluegrass, and punk especially but mostly rock. He says he likes the Cuban food he ate while he was in Florida and she tells him about the music and how she misses sneaking into Ybor City with her mother. They start learning every inch of each other.

 

A while after Barney takes his stuff out of the trailer Natalie turns to Clint in the dark. “I’m sorry.” 

“What are you sorry for?” Clint mumbles. He’s trying to sleep, ugh, but she’s been squirming all night. 

“I think Barney left because I came.” Natalie says sadly. 

“Don’t do that. Barney and me, we ain’t been brothers for a long time. He’s mad ‘cause I shoot better than him.” Clint’s awake now and he kisses her gently under her ear. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on with Barney and Trickshot and all the things that happen in the office. People are robbed in the towns they leave, and Clint’s beginning to think that Barney is in the thick of things. 

“Are you sure?” She chases his mouth with her own, trading kisses in the dark. 

“It would have happened whether you were here or not. Now I’m not alone like I would be if you weren’t here.” He rolls her underneath him and then slides his hand up her ribcage. 

“Not tonight Clint.” She pushes his hand away with a smirk and another kiss. 

“Maybe tomorrow?” He asks her and she shakes her head. 

“Probably not,” At least she’s honest with him. She’s quiet, turning her head when he goes in for another kiss but not pulling away. “I want to. I think. I like it when you kiss me and I think I’d like, you know, it. I just don’t want to be like Noreen.” Natalie sighs into his neck. 

Noreen always parks her trailer next to theirs on the fringe. She’s sixteen and she recently found out she’s pregnant by Trickshot, so he doesn’t make her do anything, and she’s absolutely miserable. Clint kind of stiffens up as if he’s offended. 

“Yeah,” Clint mutters and rolls over. 

“You’d… You’d be a better dad than him, but I just…” She tries to explain, tries to smooth it over and then just sighs, curling into a ball.

“I get it, Nat.” Clint says stiffly. 

“I don’t think you do. I’m thirteen! Every time we do it, we’d be taking the chance of making a baby. I want to. I want you.” She rolls away from him on her other side. “Just how many people can you keep safe when you’re a kid yourself.” 

“Would it be so bad?” Clint rolls back towards her to find her back to him and he spoons her. 

“Would it be so great?” She argues with him and he huffs into her neck. 

“It’s just not every day that a man gets told his partner doesn’t want to have his baby.” He mutters, more than a little hurt. 

“That’s the problem. You’re not a man and I’m not a woman.” Natalie says and Clint gasps and sits up. 

“I’ve been providing for you okay.” He really is hurt now. A man provides for his girl and he provides for her. That makes him a man and men have needs. That’s what he hears other guys say. 

“Trickshot provides for Noreen too.” She’s calm, too calm now. 

“Maybe…” Clint sits up and clears his throat. “Maybe you should go find someone else to provide for you if you want so much more.” His voice is low in the dark and she’s kind of afraid of him now. 

“You want me to leave?” She doesn’t know what to feel but hurt definitely wins out. 

“I think it’s for the best.” He answers. 

“This is my home.” She whispers. She feels as though someone’s punched her in the stomach, a fist clenching around the base of her windpipe and she can’t breathe. 

“Obviously it’s not good enough for you.” He gets out of bed and turns on the light. Then he goes and gets her duffel, holding it out towards her. 

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She reaches for it numbly. He doesn’t answer her. He just sits at the kitchen table.

“Maybe you should have thought of that before.” He mumbles. That, that right there spurs her into action and she jumps down from the bed and slams open the drawer and crams all of her clothes into the duffel, even her costume. She grabs the backpack with her things in it and then she stomps towards the door. Right before she pushes the door open she whirls back to face him. 

“I wouldn’t fuck you so you kick me out? Are you kidding me? You and me, we had to grow up fast Clint but I am a child. I thought you were different, but you’re not are you?” Natalie spits at him and then she’s gone with her duffel in her arms and her backpack over her shoulder. 

 

Natalie sits outside Shelly and Lisle’s for a while, her stuff right next to her as she looks up to the stars. She’s angry now and hurt and by the time she knocks on the door to their trailer, she’s openly crying now. Shelly is off with Trickshot (it’s how the sisters have such nice things, better pay and better food than other people). Lisle takes one look at her and wraps her arms around Natalie’s shoulders, holding her tight. 

“He kicked me out because I wouldn’t fuck him.” She cries into Lisle’s silk robe and Lisle strokes her short hair. 

“Then you don’t have to go back milaya.” Lisle doesn’t say anything else. 

 

It’s just another cruel lesson in life. People always want something in return for kindnesses they give someone else. Natalie had thought that she’d been doing a fair share of the work and that maybe she wouldn’t have to do what seemingly every other female in the circus did. To everyone else their vagina is just another asset they have. Lisle tries to explain it. Shelly trades her body for better perks for her family. Lisle has a beau, but she gets trinkets and things from him too. Lisle also tells her that it’s her decision and if she doesn’t want to, that’s Natalie’s choice and she doesn’t have to. Lisle will not expect anything of her. Well, except for cleaning up after herself.  
As stupid as it sounds, Natalie misses Clint. She sees him a lot. It’s hard not to see him. They’re both in the show, and even though she refuses to go near him when he has his bow in his hands, she still feels his eyes on her. She feels stupid even as she admits it. She thinks she loves that stupid moron. But she won’t be pressured into doing something she doesn’t want to do and she doesn’t want to have sex. She’s walked away before. Granny’s tin shed had been shitty and miserable and cold, but it had been hers and she always knew what to expect. She’d walked away before, she could walk away again. 

“He acts like lovesick fool.” Lisle tells Natalie after she’s been living with her for a few days now. They’re practicing Natalie’s longer single act. Trickshot has told her that she has to either be Clint’s assistant or have her own act. It’s either that or get out. Clint is swinging on the trapeze above them. 

“Love is for ignorant children.” Natalie answers her before stretching into a back walkover. 

“I thought you were a child.” Lisle corrects her movements slightly and then helps her do it the right way. 

“We both know I don’t have the luxury of any of that anymore.” She says bitterly. “Innocence is a luxury.”

“And you may have it as long as I’m able to provide it.” Lisle ruffles her hair. “We’re finished for the day.” Lisle leaves then. Natalie watches her go, but she doesn’t think she’s finished and so she makes a mark in the dirt and then practices her routine, trying to hit the mark over and over until she doesn’t miss. She forgets about Clint until he drops down next to her. 

“I don’t want to talk to you.” Natalie says in the middle of stretching herself tall and then over but he hasn’t gone when she stands up straight again. 

“Did you mean that?” He asks her. 

“Did I mean what? That I didn’t want to talk?” She turns on her heel and makes her way out of the tent. “I meant it.” 

He catches up to her and grabs her arm and she flinches as if she’d been burned. He drops her arm then. “That love is for ignorant children and that you weren’t a child anymore.” 

“I don’t have that luxury.” She repeats. “Love is trust and so many things I don’t have anymore.” 

“You trust me.” Clint reaches out his hand.

“I did.” She stresses, putting her hands in her pocket. 

“Do you trust Lisle?” He puts his own hands in his pockets now. 

“I don’t trust anyone. How long do you think it’ll be before Lisle will want something from me?” She asks him honestly. He winces. “Look Clint this,” She pulls her hands out of her pockets to cup her own breasts, to lift them up. “This is mine to give to whomever I want, when I’m ready. And I can trade it for whatever I want. You put conditions on my safety. I was delusional and I thought we had… something. Like I said, I was living in the delusion that you were a good man who would let me be a child. You’re no better than Trickshot-“

“I am better than him!” Clint argues. “And I love you!” 

“You’re no better than Trickshot, holding places to sleep over women’s heads for sex. That makes me a whore and whores don’t trust or love anyone, and they don’t feel safe. 

They look out for number one.” She rolls those words around in her mouth, dropping her hands back to her pocket. “I guess I am a whore.”

“And what does Lisle want?” Clint asks her. 

“I don’t know, but I’m living with the only choice I have right now.” Natalie starts to wander in the direction of Lisle and Shelly’s, kicking her heels in the dust as she walks. 

“Did you ever love me?” Clint asks forlornly. 

“You were my everything.” She doesn’t look back as she wanders away. It feels like a knife twisted in her gut. 

Natalie goes back to the trailer and curls up in the middle of the couch that’s her bed for as long as she’s here. Lisle and her beau are outside on the little patio and there’s no one to distract her from her sadness. She cries, curled into the smallest ball she possibly can get herself into. Shelly comes in and Natalie can feel the older woman watching her until she finally comes over, sitting on the couch next to Natalie’s head. 

“What’s wrong, sestrenka?” Shelly pets her hair off her forehead. Natalie doesn’t answer and just cries harder. “What has pigheaded boy done now?” 

It’s hard for her to put into words how she’s feeling, but she eventually gets it all out. 

“You either sleep with him or not. It’s your choice. But sleeping with him won’t fix everything.” Shelly gives a little shrug. “Let go of your expectations and tell him to get stuffed with his. You’re a Natalie, and a wonderful little girl, and he’s a Clint. Decide whether Natalie and Clint can work or just walk away. There is only you to look out for you, sestra.” Shelly holds up a hand. “And yes, I do care for you. But Lisle is my family. Is Clint yours? You have to talk to him baby girl. You two are so confused, I think you two never talk. Tell him what you expect. Ask him what he expects.” 

“I don’t even know what I expect Shelly.” Natalie sits up, cleaning her face on her sleeve. 

“And that is what I suspect your problem to be. You don’t know because you are child and Clint doesn’t know because he is boy.” Shelly says with a little smirk. 

“He wants to have sex and I don’t want to have a baby.” Natalie says flatly. 

“Is that all? Do you want to have sex?” Shelly laughs.

“I don’t know. Sometimes when he kissed me I did, but… I’m too young.” Natalie sighs. “I feel like it’s wrong.” 

“No milaya sestra, it is beautiful when it’s between two people who love each other.” Shelly rubs Natalie’s back after pressing her into her side. 

“You don’t love Trickshot.” Natalie frowns up at Shelly.

“No I don’t. But it’s fun and I get things, and it feels good. Sex is almost never wrong.” Shelly tells her before she launches into a conversation about the birds and the bees and condoms and safe sex. 

“So, do you love Clint?” Shelly asks after she’s gotten up, looking back from where she’s at the door about to leave. 

Natalie doesn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pi Day!


	5. I'm tired of justifying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello world  
> Hope you're listening  
> Forgive me if I’m young  
> For speaking out of turn  
> There’s someone I’ve been missing  
> I think that they could be  
> The better half of me  
> They’re in the wrong place trying to make it right  
> But I’m tired of justifying  
> So I say to you..

Natalie gets ready for the nights show with her ‘big sisters’. It’s become routine, a touchstone Natalie needs. It’s her one sense of normality now that she’s lost her home, if his trailer was ever that for her. There’s no more purple on her outfit. She’s a little flame now, ready to push people away and burn those who don’t take the hint. She’s become tough, hardened with her thick shell and prickly thorns around her feelings. Plainly put, she’s looking out for number one and she doesn’t feel anything anymore. She’s losing weight again, but it’s not Shelly or Lisle’s fault. Her appetite has gone the same way her feelings have, into the trash because she has finally figured out that she does love Clint but she will not be forced into doing anything. She’s been living with Shelly and Lisle for three weeks now and other than contributing to trailer costs she’s been hoarding every cent. She hasn’t seen Clint for two weeks now, not even during the show, so she’s a little surprised when she goes out one day to train on Elsie’s back and he’s waiting for her in one of the chairs on the little patio. 

“Hey.” Clint stands awkwardly and thrusts a flower under her nose. “I miss you, can we talk?”

She thinks about it. 

“I think we’ve said everything that needs to be said.” But she hasn’t. Seeing him brings back every hurt. It makes her confused. 

“I just wanted to say that you can come home.” 

“That’s not my home. I don’t have a home.” She pushes the flower towards his chest and steps around him, leaving yet again. 

“Nat, come on. Come home, please, I need you.” He follows after her and she changes course towards the ring of forest outside the Chattanooga fair grounds. When the fringe trailers are small in the distance, she turns to face him. “Why are we out here?” He asks in confusion. 

“You confuse me.” She sits down at the base of a tree, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I don’t know what you want from me. You want a body. There are a dozen women you could fuck.”   
“But they’re not you.” Clint presses up against her side and tries to kiss her cheek and she ducks. 

“I don’t see why I’m so special.” She mutters. He puts the slightly battered flower in between her hands. 

“They’re not the strongest woman I know. They don’t look at me with hope in their eyes, and they don’t trust me, and they don’t love me no matter how stupid I am. I told you I was a schmuck but I should have told you that I fuck everything up. I did. I fucked it all up. Nat baby come home.” He looks up at her from under his lashes. 

“I-I can’t. I felt safe and I trusted you and we made something and you… You kicked me out. You…” She babbles herself into tears. God, she cries a lot, she thinks as she tries to wipe the tears away and stop herself from crying. 

“Yeah, I fucked up. I do that. But I swear I will never ever do it again. I’ll spend every day if you give it to me being better for you.” He lifts her chin. 

“And what happens next time you kiss me and I like it, but then I don’t want to…” She jerks her chin as if to finish her sentence. “Cause it’s gonna happen.” 

“You’re in charge. I swear to God Nat, just come home.” Clint begs. “I can’t take it. You got under my skin and I love you, and you’re right because I do have a lot to learn before I can call myself a man… but you’re all I’ve got left and I can’t lose everything we started to have.” 

She thinks, dropping her head back to the tree trunk with a little thunk. 

“I’m the muscle anyways. You’re the brains of this operation.” He adds.

“Okay Clint, but I swear to potato that if you ever forget the promises you made today, I’ll cut your dick off and you’ll still be stuck with me cause it’s you and me forever, right?” She puts out her pinkie finger. She’s tired of being mad at him and fighting. And she knows she’s probably going to get hurt again (She’s wrong; he never ever breaks these promises. He finds other things to fight with her about) but she just can’t find it in herself to keep the fight going. 

“Thank God.” He bypasses her pinkie and goes in for a kiss, which she allows but only on her cheek. She jabs him in the chest with her pinkie. 

“Fucking pinkie swear.” Natalie insists. 

“I really missed you.” He laughs as he hooks his pinkie with hers. 

“Bet’cher ass you did. Kiss.” Natalie laughs too and then taps her red fingernail on her bottom lip. 

“Bossy,” Clint accuses as he lowers his mouth to hers. 

“What’d I just say?” She gets up and brushes her pants off, still laughing. 

“Hey,” He pops up and catches her hand. “I love you.” 

“I am still incredibly hurt and a little bit angry, but I love you too.” She cracks a grin and checks him with her shoulder. “Idiot.”

“I’m your idiot.” He quips. 

After Natalie goes to hang out with Elsie, she goes back to Lisle and Shelly’s and starts packing up her stuff. She leaves her costume on the couch though. She has to come back to change after all. Shelly kisses her cheeks and tells her to be happy. Clint isn’t there when she unpacks but he comes in around the time they’re supposed to get dressed, just when she’s putting her feet back in her shoes to go back over to Lisle’s. 

“Where are you going?” Clint asks, halfway out of his shirt. 

“I’ve got to go get dressed.” She gives a little shrug. 

“Oh. We used to do it together.” He’s really disappointed and she gives him a soft smile.

“I don’t have any makeup of my own, you know?” Natalie pats his arm gently.

“You could wear mine like you used to.” He offers. 

“Lisle would always wash me off and put her stuff on me as soon as we split up for the opening processional anyways.” She covers her mouth with her fingertips and laughs. “We’re not the same shade honey.”

“We’re both white.” He puts up a protest. She gives him a look that asks ‘Are you stupid?’

“And you’re kinda tan and I’m pale. Drat my redheaded skin. I have to go, Clint. Love you.” She dashes out, leaving a pouting purple archer in her wake. 

Lisle teaches her to use the makeup by herself that night. In the morning the makeup that Lisle has been using on her is in a plastic bin right next to Clint’s in the bathroom. Clint finds something else to complain about when he opens a jar of glitter and now everything in their trailer has a fine sprinkling of red sparkles. She’s carrying their plates of breakfast to the table when the glitter storm hits and she blinks, causing another little glitter storm. 

“Okay. Curious much?” She blows the glitter off their food and sets it at the table. He grins sheepishly and screws the cap back on the glitter. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something.” 

“Am I in trouble? Whatever you heard, I didn’t do it.” Clint ducks his head. 

“Now I think you did it. I don’t know what it is, but you did it.” She teases and stretches out on her side of the table, poking her fork through her eggs. “Look… You know how um… We’ve been run out of town a lot lately?” 

“Yeah,” Clint draws the word out into two syllables around the food in his mouth. 

So Natalie tells Clint about her plan, about the sinking feeling that the circus may not be safe for a couple of runaway kids pretty soon. He surprises her when he agrees and explains he’s had the same feeling. He shows her a cigar box of money he’s been squirreling away, minus the money he’d had to spend buying yucky soups again, and she adds her own money to it. They hide it away just as there’s a knock at the door. It’s Irina with a huge garbage bag of old clothes she’s getting rid of. Irina leaves happy with a half dozen of blueberry muffins still warm from the oven. 

“What are you going to do with all this?” Clint asks as she spreads all of the clothes onto the bed. 

“Well, whatever we can’t wear I’ll either pass along or do something.” Natalie purses her lips as she eyes the thin blankets on their bed. Then she finds a moss green pea coat and tries it on. “I’m going to need more thread. Do you want to go into town?”

“I’ll go, sure. Is there anything else we need?” He asks, getting his coat down from the hook by the door. 

“Butter, we always need butter.” She says with a smirk. 

“You can’t cook without butter.” Clint laughs. It’s true, she’s always said it.

“What can I say?” She shrugs out of the pea coat and begins sorting through the clothes. “I’m Southern, Iowa. Hey, can you pass me the scissors?”

“Here,” He gets the scissors from the junk drawer and passes them handle first. 

“Are you going now?” She asks, rolling her shoulders. Her neck hurts a little bit from last night’s show but it’s not a big deal. 

“I figured I would, why?” He leans on one of the bench seats bracketing the table. 

“Eh, I wanted to figure out what we could use first. And, I didn’t get a kiss.” 

“Kisses are important.” Clint retorts and walks over to the bed, leaning in and kissing her.

 

He doesn’t go to town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own anything. I don't own Clint and I don't own One Republic's Come Home. Natalie is my creation but like all good characters she''s become her


	6. Family Lost, Family Found

They’re going to be leaving Chattanooga soon when it happens. She recognizes a girl who’d been watching her really intently the night before and now she’s got two people with her that look really, really familiar. The girl has dyed pink hair and a nose ring and carries around a skate board that actually looks like it’s been ridden. The man looks like Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead, all grey hair and grey beard and kind of chunky but he’s tall. The woman is about the girl’s height with one of those nineties mom perms. The show’s been over for nearly twenty minutes and it’s just Clint and Natalie in the tent with Elsie now. The man keeps looking pointedly at Clint when he’s not looking at Natalie. Finally the girl drags the people who must be her parents over to where Natalie is watching Clint collect his arrows after his cool down, lying cradled by Elsie’s trunk. 

“Excuse me, is your name Natalie?” The man asks and Clint’s head whips around so fast that Natalie thinks he’s given himself whiplash.

“Um,” Natalie stammers.

“Natalie Mook?” The woman presses her, eager for an answer and Natalie stares at the three of them for a good minute. 

“Uncle Steve? Aunt Jo? Anna? Is it really you?” She leaps out of Elsie’s trunk and then launches herself at Uncle Steve, wrapping her arms around him. Her aunt and cousin wrap her up in a hug, tight as can be, before she remembers where they are. Clint’s standing next to Elsie now, who has accepted him as being Natalie’s and that makes him okay in Elsie’s book, looking a little lost.   
“We’ve been worried sick ever since you went to Shirley’s house.” Aunt Jo has tears in her eyes, but Natalie sees that she isn’t the only one. But then Natalie sees Trickshot heading into the tent and she freaks out a little. She just has the feeling that he shouldn’t know about her family. 

“And this is our wonderful elephant Elsie, folks.” She steps back and waves her arms like she’s showing off the elephant to some townies. “I should really put her in her pen.” She says loudly then she turns towards Clint. 

“This is my family, Clint. Can you sneak them to our trailer? Don’t let Trickshot see you. I’ll put Elsie in her pen and then come right home.” She turns back to her family. “Clint’s gonna take you to our house but you can’t let the big fat guy see you.” She whispers. Uncle Steve looks puzzled but he listens to Clint as Natalie climbs onto Elsie’s trunk. 

When she gets back to the trailer, Uncle Steve is glaring murderous daggers at Clint. Clint’s got his arms crossed over his chest, looking for the entire world like he’d rather be anywhere else but Natalie can see that he’s upset, as if Uncle Steve told him how bad of a fuck up he is. Clint gets that look sometimes when adults judge him. Okay, Clint gets that look every time anyone judges him. 

“What’d I miss?” Natalie tries to diffuse the situation, taking her new pea coat off the hook and huddling into it. Clint has the heater turned on as soon as he came in, but the trailer was still freezing. 

“You live here?” Aunt Jo asks. Natalie isn’t sure she likes the tone of her voice. 

“Yeah Aunt Jo, it’s my home.” Natalie frowns a little. 

“How did you even get here? Why did you leave Shirley’s?” Uncle Steve asks and Natalie winces, leaning into Clint. He uncrosses his arms and wraps one of his arms around her shoulders. Natalie doesn’t know how to answer delicately, so she slips her arms out of her coat and peels one arm out of her leotard, sliding it down in the back and turning so they could see the pink cross hatches of her scars. 

“Granny liked to beat me and when she wasn’t… This is a palace. I lived in a tin tool shed.” Natalie dresses again quickly. “Besides, I’m living a dream! I ran away to the circus.” She laughs. 

So they don’t quite like it, but they get it. Her Uncle Steve was her mother Belle’s middle brother and he rides a Harley and he’s a physician’s assistant, who is like a doctor but without the need for malpractice insurance and he insists on checking out the scabs on her back. Her aunt is a nurse, and Anna wants to be a grunge rocker but without all the playing music stuff. And her mom’s side of the family gets the fact that they want to do it on their own. They take Natalie and Clint home with them for dinner, which makes Clint stare at all the food there and call Natalie a bad cook and she knees him in the guts and calls him a dick and Aunt Jo watches them with a fond smile. Uncle Steve invites Clint to go shooting the next morning and when they go back, Natalie stashes all her really valuable things like the VHS tapes and Belle’s jewelry box with her family. And when Anna asks where they’re going next and they answer Kentucky, Natalie’s got a list of addresses and names and phone numbers of a whole slew of McKay’s, which is Belle’s family. And hopefully, Trickshot and Barney have no idea. 

 

Except that Trickshot notices that Natalie and Clint left with some townies and he gets it in his head that Clint’s edging into the robbery business. Clint comes back to the trailer after he gets dragged out in his pajamas by Barney when the sky is still grey, and when he comes back he’s as grey as the sky had been when he left. 

“They want me to start robbing townies with them.” He looks like he’s going to be sick.

“Are you going to do it?” Natalie sits up, holding the blanket to her chest over her own pajamas as she does. 

“I don’t know what other choice we have right now. If I don’t, they’ll do something bad.” Clint really looks sick now and she rubs his back lightly. 

“So… We have to start planning our exit.” She nods decisively. 

“And you’re going to learn how to drive.” Clint announces. 

They keep their heads down in Kentucky. A quick call from Clint during a town run gives Uncle Steve the heads up to keep the family away, and he doesn’t ask too many questions. Uncle Steve just asks if Clint’s going to keep Natalie safe. 

“Until the day I die.” Clint promises. Steve seems pleased and tells Clint to take care of himself too before he hangs up. 

They only go into town once while they’re in Kentucky, although by the time they leave and go to Missouri Clint is seriously craving some French fries. 

Natalie starts spending time up on the high wire. She’s really good at the high wire, once her feet got used to the pain and toughened up. For Natalie, it’s no different than ballet had been pain wise. She works through it and gets over it. As for the narrow wire, it’s also no different than hitting her mark on Elsie’s back. Clint doesn’t get it because he loves swinging on the trapeze stuff and she really hates the trapeze. He loves to feel like he’s flying, swinging upside down with his knees hooked over the trapeze bar. Natalie can’t keep from barfing. It’s cool and all, but it makes her sick. She hates throwing up. Clint thinks it’s just the height, the high wire is as high up as the trapeze, but he doesn’t get sick so how could she get sick? She likes the flying, but she can’t handle the back and forth swinging.

Natalie gets a serious heads up when she’s up on the high wire and she finds out that the prickling feeling on the back of her neck wasn’t Trickshot watching her, but some other man who looks sort of like him. When she comes down from the safety net, he’s there trying to give her a bottle of water.

“You looked good up there, missy.” The big man tells her and while she doesn’t take his bottle of water, she takes his compliments. She doesn’t stay long to talk. He looks like Trickshot and the look in this man’s eyes is too much like the greasy ringmaster’s. 

When Clint gets back from the ring toss booth, she asks about the man and learns the story about Swordsman, Trickshot’s associate and how the two men taught Clint how to shoot a bow and the latter taught Clint to use a sword. They had taken Clint and Barney under their wings and gave the Barton boys a refuge from the foster system. Clint refuses to acknowledge the sting of another father figure letting him down. 

The more she hangs out with Shelly and Lisle, the more Natalie picks up on their movements. Her walk changes into something a little more feminine, she begins to look and move more like a sensual being and not a little girl. She starts wearing makeup even during the day, not as made up as the sisters but a lighter and more natural version of her stage makeup. Her hair is growing longer and other than a trim to keep it looking good, Lisle doesn’t cut it short anymore. Clint starts taking her out to the parties after the circus closes down to townies. There’s dancing and music, which Natalie really likes and Clint likes dancing with Natalie. It’s seductive to watch the two together, sexy even. There’s no denying that Natalie is a woman now, a little woman but still a woman. Lisle tells her so one morning when she sits Natalie down over Belgian waffles and tiny cups of dark Ukrainian coffee. Natalie has never had coffee before. Clint drinks it like an addict though never at home because they don’t have a coffee maker, but Natalie prefers her caffeine cold and of the carbonated variety. Focus, Lisle snaps her fingers in front of the younger woman’s face. Once Natalie is focused on Lisle again, Lisle starts to tell her about the birds and the bees. Natalie tells her that Shelly told her about it and Lisle looks relieved. When they finish breakfast, Lisle asks her about condoms. When Natalie says she hasn’t got any, Lisle disappears into her room and then comes out with a strip of foil packets and sends Natalie on her way. Natalie is jittery all day after that cup of coffee. Her foot kicks constantly every time she focuses her attention on something other than holding still, and she twitches as she’s dismounting from Elsie and she falls hard on her shoulder. Turns out Clint’s hands are good for something other than just shooting his bow. He gives her a massage that night that turns her into a boneless puddle of goo, so much so that when he wants to get into bed and she’s starfished out across it, he’s the one who ends up picking her up and shifting her over. 

Clint and Natalie continue pretending to be adults when they’re children, keeping their life together the only way they can right now. Clint leaves with Barney some nights. She hasn’t forgotten about the pile of clothes, the unusable rags they can’t wear or pass on but some of the fabric is okay, that she was going to shore up their blankets with. On the nights that Clint has to go out with Barney, Swordsman and Trickshot, Natalie sews. She makes their blankets thicker and then starts on a quilt all of their own. It’s something her Mimaw showed her. It’s called a story quilt, and it’s made from pieces of fabric that tell a person or couple’s life in fabric and it’s pretty cool. When Clint gets to stay home they go to the parties. One night, a week or so before Christmas, he comes home from a job with an air of desperation about him and grabs Natalie and they go out to where they can hear the music and join the party. They split her first beer, which turns into her first shot of whiskey and a couple more beers and a whole lot of kisses and desperate groping on the way back to their trailer, and that’s the night that Natalie gives in to Clint. They try to have sex but the condom doesn’t fit him and they get creative, fumbling through the awkward clumsy touches of people who have no idea what they’re doing but are having a lot of fun doing it.   
Natalie goes to Lisle after breakfast the next morning and when Lisle sees her, she spits her coffee all over the table. 

“Milaya sestra, you got laid.” Lisle says proudly.   
“Not yet.” Natalie tosses down the strip of condoms, minus the two that they’d broken trying to get one on him the night before. “These didn’t fit.” 

“Oh that’s okay. They come in different sizes. We’ll go and get some smaller ones.” Lisle pushes herself up from the table and cleans up her coffee, and then shrugs into her coat. 

“No Lisle, they didn’t fit.” Natalie stresses and at Lisle’s strange look she explains. “They were too small.” 

“You lucky bitch,” Lisle swears enviously and then laughs at the startled look on Natalie’s face. “You are a lucky, lucky woman.” 

Natalie leaves the box of condoms on the table when she gets back from town with Lisle, then gathers up her costume and gets dressed at Lisle’s. She’s making it pretty clear in her shy way about what she wants, at least she thinks so, and Clint doesn’t fail to get the picture. He’s on Elsie’s back with her as soon as the finale finishes, before the audience has even left the big top. He doesn’t kiss her yet, but as soon as Natalie’s got Elsie heading towards her pen, his mouth is on her neck and his hands are absolutely everywhere. She rushes through taking care of Elsie and then they’re running hand in hand back to their trailer. The heater gets turned on almost as an afterthought as she shoves her hands under his shirt and pulls it up. He only pulls back for a minute to yank it off, stumbling into her when it gets caught on his quiver and his bow over his chest. Clint grunts, stripping them off and tossing them on the table (ignoring the scatter of arrows for now) and pinning her against the wall.

“Are you sure?” He mumbles even as he’s trying to get her out of her leotard. She answers with a distracted Mmhmm as he strips her leotard down her legs and off and he follows it down, lifting one of her legs to rest over his shoulder so he can put his mouth right there. The air rushes out of her lungs as if she’s been punched and her hips arch against his mouth eagerly. It doesn’t take long before she’s close, though. 

“Yes, oh God I’m so sure.” Her hands are scrabbling against the smooth wall of the trailer and her knees are feeling wobbly now. He grins up at her, unrepentant as he shoves his tongue in now and that has her cupping the back of his head, off and babbling his name as she comes. He licks her through it and when she’s leaning on the wall trying to catch her breath, he sweeps his arm under her knees and tosses her over his shoulder. She grabs the condoms as he walks past the table and tosses her up onto their bed, then shucks the rest of his clothes. 

“You’re going to stop me if it’s too much, right?” He crawls up to settle above her, leaning down for a kiss as she’s trying to get the packet open. 

“I want you.” Natalie looks up at Clint. His gaze has gone lustful and he lifts the condom packet up to his mouth, her fingers still wrapped around it, to tear it open with his teeth. 

They fumble with putting it on together. He’s hard, so hard, already so that’s not a problem. It’s her hands stroking him as she’s trying to put the condom on him that makes it hard to concentrate, so he takes it from her hand and rolls it on right on the second try. 

The sounds she’s making, holy shit she has a sex voice, as he’s spreading his fingers through her slick juices are killing him though, so he kisses her as he slides his middle finger deep. He doesn’t give her much time to get used to it before he’s pumping his finger in her, adding another. Before long she’s arching her back and working against his fingers, the nails of one of her hand scoring across his shoulders. He scissors his fingers in her before pulling them out and taking himself in hand. Natalie lifts her head up from the pillow, blinking her eyes open up to him.

“It’s ‘kay baby, gonna fill you up so good.” Clint rubs the head of his dick against her clit and then pushes down, the thick head of his dick beginning to spread her wide. 

“Oh God,” She moans, her head falling back to the pillow as her hips push towards his desperately. Her hand leaves his shoulders and settles on the back of his neck clenching and digging into his skin as he pushes deeper inside her. 

It hurts, it hurts her a lot. She watches his face as he works his way inside, pushing in a little and then pulling back only to push back in a little further. He’s definitely concentrating on holding back. The muscles in his forearms are all veiny and corded as he balances on his elbows and knees, keeping his weight off her. She feels stretched almost immediately and it burns, but then there’s a little pop and she can breathe again. It still hurts and she’s twitching around him, not quite coming but there’s something going on down there. He gasps and drops his face into her neck, holding absolutely still as she tries to get her own self under control. She feels like she’s being split in half, but then he’s moving and he’s still too big, but now there’s little thrills of lightning chasing up her spine. 

“Fuck,” Clint breathes against her neck and she shudders, rolling her hips up towards his, impatient for another orgasm. “I’m gonna lose it if you keep doing that.” He groans, finding a rhythm for his thrusts after a series of stilted jerks. 

“Good, you’re too big. Come on, fuck me. I want to come,” She teases him at first but ends up whining, hitching her legs up around his waist and she cries out at the change in angle as he slides in deeper. One of his hands slide down from where it was braced by her shoulder and grips her hip and she’s bouncing now from the strength of his hips snapping into hers. 

“Gonna make it last, make it good.” He grunts against her throat. 

“Orgasms are good.” She wheezes and grips a hand in his hair and she feels him twitch inside her. Oh, he likes his hair being pulled. 

“Greedy, my woman’s a greedy one.” Clint stretches up to kiss her. 

“And impatient,” She adds, biting at his tongue. It feels good now, the pain is still there but she just doesn’t care about it when he’s pushing into her. Her breath catches as he changes his angle and drags along her clit and then she sobs out his name, hauling on her handful of his hair and he arches his back and gives another thrust, deeper than the rest and he practically howls as he jerks into her in his own orgasm. 

Clint collapses onto her when he’s finished and she wraps sweaty limbs around him, closing her eyes. 

“Fuck,” He says again and Natalie smiles. 

“Right? Baby, that was amazing.” She reaches for his face, turning him towards her to kiss him sloppily.

“Why didn’t we do that sooner?” He wonders, tracing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. 

“I wasn’t ready.” She reminds him. He starts to pull out and she winces, taking a deep breath. “Oh God, sore.” 

“Are you okay?” He asks quickly. 

“Yep, never better.” She answers quickly. He gets up and goes into the bathroom to take care of the condom. In the light he sees the blood and pokes his head out into the main room. He turns the lights in the trailer on now. 

“Natalie?” Clint asks carefully. 

“Mmhmm?” She answers, stretching her arms and legs in the bed, feeling relaxed and perfect except for the dull ache between her thighs. 

“Did you start your period?” He asks, still in that careful tone like he might get yelled at for things he doesn’t know, but there are always things that Natalie’s sensitive about and he never knows and yikes, this might be one. 

“No,” Natalie draws it out into two syllables. 

“Why are you bleeding then?” Clint comes back with a wash cloth and presses it between her legs and she sighs a little bit. 

“It’s normal for the first time. Thank you honey, that feels good.” She answers simply and although he doesn’t quite believe her after he finds blood between her thighs, he rinses out the wash cloth in the bathroom and then comes to curl up with her again. They cuddle together face to face, her head tucked under his chin and their arms wrapped around each other, legs tangled. “Hey, you wanna do that again?” She asks after a few minutes and her lady parts are starting to perk up again. 

“How is it feeling down there?” Clint lifts his head and looks at her with pursed lips. She wriggles and winces and he lays his head back down. “Thought so. We have forever Nat; don’t break it the first night.” 

“Wait, can that even happen?” She sits up and looks to the shelf where she keeps her books, itching to get her hands on her medical dictionaries. 

“Oh God, can it?” He jumps out of bed, naked as a jay bird, and grabs both of the dictionaries. He tosses l through z to her and starts flipping through pages of a through k as fast as he can. “What am I looking for?” 

“Uh, vagina I think? I mean if your vagina breaks, that’d be under vagina, right?”

“Vagina, virginity, it’s all spelled with V, right?” Clint looks up in a panic. 

“Look up break?” She’s got the v section open to vagina and she’s reading in the light, holding the book up to her face as she squints to read the words. “What, I need glasses.” She shrugs. 

“Oh my God,” Clint’s still flipping through pages.

“Did you find something?” Natalie blinks. 

“No, did you?” His voice is high and squeaky. 

“We’re so not ready for this!” Natalie tosses down her dictionary. “But you cannot break a vagina. You can tear it. We shouldn’t be having sex if we think we can break something!” 

“Oh God, I think you’re right!” 

It takes them almost two whole days before they try again. And repeat for scientific purposes.


End file.
